When Billboard started publishing in 1894, Grover Cleveland was president of the United States of America — all 44 of them. Parsing politics has never been this publication’s primary purpose, but over the decades since, every POTUS has popped up in our pages. So, ahead of Election Day (Nov. 5), Billboard tips its reporter’s hat to the commanders in chief whose policies and cultural cachet helped shape the music business.
NO. 1 WITH A ‘BULLET’
The Sept. 21, 1901, issue of Billboard covered “an almost prophetic incident” that occurred at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., the day an assassin shot President William McKinley at the Temple of Music (Sept. 6). (He died from the injury a week later.) “Only a moment or two before the shot rang out,” a friend of…
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Billboard (Digital) - 1 Issue, October 26, 2024